a sort of beach-boy Lebowski with a
gift for sudden violence, and Ad
Astra’s Maj. Roy McBride, an almost
pathologically contained spaceman
on a solo mission to Mars. “Well,
Cliff is by far a much easier way to
live, and certainly I would say
what we’re all striving for,” he says,
chuckling. “But to get to Cliff ’s
peace of mind and acceptance in the
day, you’d probably have to go
through Roy’s dilemma to get there.”
Pitt quickly grows more serious,
though, on the subject of Roy’s
arc in Astra—an emotional journey
that often finds the major strug-
gling to maintain his NASA-trained
composure, even as the fate of
both his family and the free world
(and, the movie heavily implies,
his soul, too) hangs in the balance.
“Toxic masculinity, that may be a
little harsh as a term? But certainly
we’re questioning what is mascu-
linity,” he muses. “Having grown
up in an era where we are taught
to be stoic, taught to be capable,
not to show weakness, never be
disrespected—that works for
the pioneer spirit, I guess, on the
plain, when you’re trying to make
your claim. But it’s also very limit-
ing, because it doesn’t embrace
the whole human being.”And while he confesses he has no
special affinity for space movies (“I
mean, when I was a kid my dad took
me to see Alien, and that’s still every-
thing ”), Astra did get him pondering
the mysteries of the universe, as it
were: “There are powers there that
we cannot even begin to understand
that can bend time,” he marvels, “and
gravitational forces that could crush
a planet. And just that we ourselves
are made from dying stars—I find
that really awe-inspiring, specifically
because of how much we don’t know
and yet how connected we are to it.”
Astra director James Gray (The
Lost City of Z), who has known Pitt
for more than two decades, tells EW
that though he didn’t pen the script
for his longtime friend—“I never← Clockwise from
left Brad Pitt as an
easy rider in Once
Upon a Time...in
Hollywood; and
an uneasy one in
Ad Astra